


Second Drift

by ArchangelUnmei



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-28 23:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3874306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchangelUnmei/pseuds/ArchangelUnmei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kotetsu Kaburagi used to be a jaeger pilot, but that was years ago. Now he's just a single father who quietly misses the days he could do something against the kaijuu. But when his old boss tracks him down and asks him to try drifting with a hot-shot young pilot who's been unable to successfully drift with anybody else, what can Kotetsu do but say yes?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

You learn everything in the drift.

_A young boy, dark-haired and lanky, standing on the porch of a traditional Japanese house with a traditional Japanese garden, eyes wide as he stares at the billowing smoke and steam rising from over the horizon. The knowledge that Tokyo is burning._

_He melts, fades into another boy of about the same age, pale as moonlight in a dark suit that smudges shadows across the drift, sombre and silent._

_Speed, a sense of time and age. The dark-haired boy becoming a dark-haired young man, running alongside another as they train, work themselves into muscle and sweat with their eyes on the ultimate prize, the giant robots that will save the world._

_The pale boy too, becomes a pale young man, still solemn, lips pressed into thin lines, eyes pinching as he hunches over a computer screen, lines of bright code reflected in his glasses, bringing the jaeger to life._

_The images blur together even more. A woman in a hospital bed, her lips and fingernails tinged purple-blue with poison, the dark-haired man beside her with a toddler in his arms, stuttering into an older woman with neat clothes and neat hair, bringing coffee and food during binges of all-night coding._

_A sharp spike of intense emotion- pain and fear, surging through the drift, straining but not breaking it as everything dissolves into a swirl of kaijuu and twisted shrapnel, the screech of tortured metal mixing with the screams of the pilots as the jaeger’s injury rips across their nerves-  
_

~~

The kaijuu came when Kotetsu was twelve.

He remembers watching the first attacks on Tokyo on TV from his grandparents’ home in Ibaraki, and being able to see the smoke hovering on the horizon. He doesn’t remember being afraid, but he does remember the way his parents and grandparents became suddenly so serious, spoke in hushed tones and wouldn’t let him and his brother go outside anymore. That scared him more than any monster on TV.

As soon as it could be arranged, they moved out of Japan and to the United States, far away from any coast. That was where Kotetsu met Antonio, and they became fast friends despite barely speaking the same language at the beginning.

Both of them were determined to find a way to fight the kaijuu, so when they heard about a program taking volunteers to test pilot what would become the first jaegers, they jumped at the chance. They trained hard, physically and mentally, and owing in part to their long friendship they found themselves drift compatible.

They were the third team to ever deploy, and the youngest, dropping into the Pacific shallows in a big green and grey beast they dubbed Rock Bison. The Mark I’s were unstable and duct taped together, the software that guided the drift was still being refined. When the jaeger was damaged, the pilots felt it more severely than they did in later models, nerves seared as though they’d sustained the injury themselves.

In their seventh year of fighting, just as the Mk III’s were coming into use, the first Category 4 to ever breach ripped off Rock Bison’s arm.

~~

Kotetsu was at the bar, idly watching a report on the latest attack when a woman slid onto the stool next to him. He didn’t even have to look to know her, tall and blond with her sharp military uniform straining to contain her impressive cleavage. He took a drink of from the glass in front of him. “Evening, Agnes.”

“That’s ‘admiral’ to you, you never officially resigned,” she sniffed, and would have tossed her hair were it not tightly bound back. “I’ll have what he’s having, barkeep.”

“Water it is,” Kotetsu’s favorite bartender said with a grin, and Agnes gave him a surprised, then thoughtfully pleased look.

“I suppose that makes sense. You’re living with Kaede again, aren’t you?”

“Mostly. No more barracks for me.”

Agnes sighed, apparently decided to stop the small talk. She’d never been good at it, with Kotetsu. “I want- no, I need you back.”

Kotetsu choked on his water and coughed, turning a furious glare on her. “ _Hell_ no. I got out for Kaede, and I’m staying out for her. Losing one parent to kaijuu is bad enough without the other one jumping into their jaws.”

“You’re too good to let a kaijuu take you,” Agnes flicked her fingers dismissively, recrossed her legs the other way. “Let’s face it, if it hadn’t been for Antonio’s arm you’d both still be out there. Probably still in that hideous lump of a Mk I, good god.” She shuddered delicately, and Kotetsu scowled.

“Bison was a _tank_ , faithful to the end.”

“Besides,” Agnes ignored his comment, giving him a hooded look. “You’re not as 'out’ as you claim. You’re dying to do something against the kaijuu. You still have that hero complex, why else would you volunteer with the evac teams so often?”

“That’s different, it’s much further from harm’s way!”

“Not from Kaijuu Blue. Wasn’t it you who just said Kaede losing one of her parents was enough…?”

Kotetsu bit his tongue, then sighed. “What do you want, Agnes?”

“I’ve got a Mk VI ready to deploy.” She smiled when Kotetsu sat up straighter, and he slumped again sheepishly. “We’ve got one pilot, a brilliant young man who might almost have been a match for you in your prime.”

“Hey!”

“But,” Agnes ignored him and kept on talking; easy with practice. “He’s not been able to drift with any of the copilots we’ve tried. He’s a very passionate, driven young man, but he’s not used to letting anyone close enough to touch, let alone drift.”

“So get another pilot altogether, then.”

“That would be impossible. Mr. Brooks designed most of the Mk VI’s pilot interfacing and software himself, and he requested the rights to fly it. Given the circumstances, we’ve agreed.”

Kotetsu couldn’t help an impressed whistle, scratching at his goatee. “What makes you think that I’d be any different, then?”

“You have more experience than any of our other combat pilots. And you’ve made peace with your demons, you wouldn’t contaminate the drift and it might even be able to help soothe it.”

“Mm,” It was a tempting offer. Very tempting. The rush of fighting, of keeping people’s children safe, and all in a bright, shiny, untested jaeger. It would be just like the good old days. And as much as he didn’t want to admit it, Agnes was right. Having fought the kaijuu hand-to-hand (or claw, or tentacle thing), going back to having to sit out the attacks had been slowly driving him mad over the years. He wanted to fight. Sometimes, in the dark of night once Kaede was in bed, he wondered if that was all he was made for.

And way down deep inside, the thought of being in a jaeger again thrilled him. He couldn’t remember being this happy since Tomoe died. And wasn’t that a horrible thought?

And yet…

“…Alright. I’m _not_ agreeing 100% to go back into combat yet, especially since we don’t know how well my hand will hold up, but I’ll give drifting with this guy a try. On one condition.”

“Oh?” she eyed him warily.

“I get to name this one.”

Rock Bison had been named by Antonio, something about Mexican wrestlers and childhood heroes. Kotetsu hadn’t really been listening at the time, and it had sounded like a cool enough name, so Rock Bison it was.

Agnes sighed, massaging at her temple as though the concession pained her. “Fine, provided Mr. Brooks gets veto rights.”

The first time it had gone unnoticed, but the second time she said his name Kotetsu raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you be calling him by rank, Ms. Admiral?”

Agnes sighed again; her life was hard, especially when dealing with Kotetsu. Still, he could be charming in his own annoying way, and she would readily admit he was probably the best jaeger pilot there was. And, in a twisted way, she’d missed seeing him in the halls at the Sternbild jaeger base, arguing with him over tiny mission details and smacking him upside the head when he got too out of line. It would be good to have him back, not that she’d ever actually tell him that. His ego was big enough as it was. “Well, that would be difficult since he doesn’t have one.”

Kotetsu let out a startled laugh. “What? They made Antonio and I enlist before they even considered letting us be pilot candidates, way back when. Getting a little desperate?”

“Hardly. As I said, Mr. Brooks has been a jaeger programmer for years, and he coded the Mk VI essentially solo. He requested to be considered for a pilot position, and considering the work he’s put into it, special concessions have been made.”

Kotetsu muttered something that might have been 'cheater’, and Agnes gave him a sharp look. “Are you in or not?”

“I’m in, I’m in! We’ll see if this kid is as good as you say he is.”

“I suppose we will.” Agnes laid a bill down on the bar, and for a moment Kotetsu wondered where she’d gotten it. He hadn’t seen her rustling through the neat little purse she was carrying, but then again Agnes had always been like that. She got up smoothly, and he half-turned on his stool to watch her. “I’ll contact you with the details,” she said, “But expect to be called in sometime next week.” She paused briefly and put a hand on his shoulder. It occurred to Kotetsu suddenly that the last time he’d seen her in person had been at Tomoe’s funeral, nine years ago. “It’s good to see you, Kotetsu.”

“Yeah,” Kotetsu shrugged slightly, awkwardly, grabbed his glass to drain the rest, just for something to do. “You too.”

~*~

Barnaby Brooks Junior was born into a world at war, three years after the kaijuu first came. He grew up far from the coast, but even so they learned all the drills in school, and their town had an underground shelter, just in case.

When he was a child, all his classmates were fascinated by kaijuu, wavering back and forth between awe and fear, excitement and wariness in the way of children who don’t quite understand how the adult world works and suspect that everything might actually just be a giant game. There was one boy Barnaby knew in the second grade who had a stuffed kaijuu that he carried with him everywhere like a security blanket.

Barnaby himself never cared. The kaijuu were always far away, and if anything he was more interested in the jaeger; how such huge things could be built and moved by people was a mystery that he wanted to solve.

When he was ten, his father’s job offered him a promotion, but it required them to move across the country. Suddenly, they were only a dozen miles from the coast, and Barnaby remembers vividly his mother fretting and his father trying to reassure; kaijuu never came this far inland, and never into areas this sparsely populated. For whatever reason, they always seemed laser-guided to the largest cities.

There should never have been a kaijuu, but there was.

Barnaby was in school when the attack came, but because no one ever expected one, there was no warning and no preparation. Everything was disorganized chaos, screaming and running and Barnaby remembers wanting to find his mother, to reassure her and make sure she was safe since she’d been right about the kaijuu after all.

He never found his parents. They died in the attack, along with most of his schoolmates and everyone else he knew. He managed to get away, to find a little high ground outside the town, one tiny boy lost within the wilderness as three jaeger converged on the kaijuu.

He remembers this, far clearer than any of the horror or the fear. He doesn’t remember how he felt, but he remembers what he saw, burned into his eyes to be replayed over and over.

The kaijuu was huge and nasty, Barnaby had never thought they could be that big. It had a sharp, pointed beak and heavy, meaty arms and shoulders that looked terribly out of proportion to its skinny hips and legs, balance aided by a thick, lizard-like tail. Its upper body was so out of proportion, in fact, that to move it slammed its fists into the ground like a gorilla.

And he remembers the jaeger gleaming in the sunlight, every detail cataloged because he was _ten_ and he knew every fact about the jaegers that he could cram into his head. Gypsy Danger was a brand new MK III, only built last year and only blooded in a few battles so far. The other two were both older MK I’s, battle scarred but still holding their own; Yukon Brawler and Rock Bison.

He wasn’t afraid, he knew the jaegers would save them. He remembers cheering them on, tiny voice lost under monstrous roars and screeching metal, tons of mass slamming together perilously close over his head.

His cheers probably turned to screaming when the kaijuu grabbed ahold of Rock Bison, grotesque shoulders straining with titanic strength as it ripped the arm clean off the jaeger, but he doesn’t remember.

~*~

Kotetsu didn’t meet Barnaby before they stepped into the sterile white room and settled into the chairs for the test drift. Agnes said that her techs had some weird theory that not meeting before a drift gave a clearer picture about whether or not the pair was truly compatible. Frankly, since Kotetsu’s only other drift partner had been his best friend for years before they even knew what a drift was, he thought the theory was a load of shit. But Agnes just shrugged, so Kotetsu rolled his eyes and went along with it.

There wasn’t time for more than a hello and a handshake before they settled into their chairs and slipped on the headsets that would provide the basis of the neural link. Kotetsu didn’t know much about Barnaby beyond that he was a software engineer, had lost his parents to a kaijuu attack, and that he wasn’t much more than a kid.

(Then again, some part of him felt compelled to point out, he was _still_ older than _Kotetsu_ had been the first time _he_ stepped into a jaeger.)

Kotetsu wasn’t sure what Agnes had felt the need to tell Barnaby about him, and it was hard to read much from the cool blue eyes that gave him a once-over as they settled into their seats. Kotetsu wondered if all Barnaby, in his crisp white pants and tailored shirt, saw was an old man well past his prime. He felt a pang in his hand, and realized he was gripping at the arms of his seat far harder than necessary. With a grimace he forced himself to relax, closing his eyes and putting Barnaby out of his mind in preparation for the drift.

He didn’t know what he was doing, not really. The first time he and Antonio drifted it had been very different - the idea at the time was that syncing the pilots mental maps would be easier if their physical movements were already synced, so he and Antonio had been on treadmills side-by-side, hooked up to wires and sensors and god knows what and told to _run_. It had been… odd, and nearly magical in a way. Kotetsu remembers running, and the odd sense that he and Antonio were blending together, until there was only one of them running with steps perfectly in sync. He learned from watching video later that the moment their feet struck the ground together, their eyes began to glow blue. Successful drift.

And every time after that, it had been easy. He and Antonio knew each other inside and out, their likes and dislikes and fears and allergies. Barnaby was a stranger, and this technology was worlds beyond what Kotetsu had used in the old days.

“Bonjour, heroes,” Agnes’ voice came over the speakers from where she and the techs were watching behind a one-way mirror, and Kotetsu rolled his eyes. Still the same old spiel. “Relax. You both know how this is done. Drift initiating in three, two, one…”

There was a jolt, more than Kotetsu remembered, his vision graying out as the drift overtook his senses. Memories played, rewound and sped up at random, his own mixing with what he assumed were Barnaby’s. There were flashes of familiar things; Tomoe, Kaede, Antonio. And kaijuu. And then there were the unfamiliar things that, in the drift, were oddly familiar as well, Barnaby’s thoughts sparking over into Kotetsu’s mind. Aunt Samantha. Uncle Maverick. Kaijuu.

Kotetsu tried to relax, to let the drift settle, but something kept pulling at him. Kaijuu. He 'glanced’ over sideways, saw Barnaby looking back at him.

Genghis, the name given to the first Category 4 kaijuu. It breached off the coast of Sternbild when Barnaby was ten.

Suddenly both of them are standing there, on that hill where Barnaby somehow survived, and for Kotetsu it’s really fucking surreal watching the fight from the outside, because he remembers it from the inside. He can feel Barnaby beside him, almost vibrating in anxiety, breath hitching. Without even thinking about it, without taking his eyes off the kaijuu and jaeger trading blows, Kotetsu reaches over and puts a firm hand on his shoulder.

It stings, the tight grip sends a brief flare of pain through the nerves damaged in this very battle they’re watching. Out of the corner of his eye Kotetsu sees Barnaby’s fist clench in startled reaction to the shared pain, but it seems to steady him a bit. He swallows, takes a breath, opens his mouth to say something, but Kotetsu beats him to it.

“The battle didn’t go on this long, you know. I remember, I was there too. Right there.” He raises his other hand to point at Rock Bison, feels Barnaby jerk a little under his hand. “Why are you stalling?”

“I…” Barnaby swallows again, and Kotetsu shakes his head.

“You can’t lie in the drift, not without breaking it. You were just a kid, it must have shaken you to see a jaeger fall. But you also saw Brawler and Gypsy come back and kick Genghis’ ass in vengeance, and Antonio and I walked away minus a limb or two, but at least we kept our lives. Jaeger fall and pilots die, kid, that’s a fact you have to deal with before you step into one at all.”

Barnaby takes a long breath, deep enough that Kotetsu feels his shoulder raise and his head tip back. He lets out the held breath in a rush, and the drift settles.

Kotetsu’s vision came back into focus still locked on Barnaby’s face. He blinked, then let out a breath of his own he hadn’t known he was holding. Barnaby’s eyes, and his own, were glowing blue.

~*~

Antonio knocked on the door right around dinner time, and Kaede squealed, abandoning her duties setting the table to run and answer the door. Kotetsu just sighed, but couldn’t help a smile as he stepped away from the stove to grab another place setting. Honestly, he’d been expecting this particular social call for days, ever since the pilots for the new MK VI had been officially announced.

Kaede returned, dragging Antonio by his remaining hand and babbling about a project on jaeger she was working on for school. All the other kids thought the fact that her father and honorary uncle were jaeger pilots was amazingly cool, and Kotetsu had been dodging calls from her teacher to come in and give a speech for weeks. He probably wouldn’t be able to avoid it now.

Antonio just smiled indulgently, letting himself be dragged over to his place at the table. The empty sleeve of his t-shirt didn’t bother Kaede like it did most kids (or, frankly, most people), but she’d only been two when Rock Bison had fallen, she didn’t remember Antonio any other way.

He hadn’t actually _lost_ his arm in the kaijuu attack, per se. The cockpit had never been breached. But when the jaeger’s arm had been ripped off, it tore through both Antonio and Kotetsu’s nervous systems as well. For Kotetsu, it had been his non-dominant side, so the damage was less severe. His hand pained him sometimes, especially when he was trying to grip something, and he didn’t have nearly the strength or the range of motion he once did. But for Antonio, it was as if the nerves had been severed as completely as the jaeger’s. His arm wouldn’t respond to him at all, and so after a couple months of attempted rehab he’d made the decision to have it amputated completely. But at least he was alive, and he’d eventually come to terms with that.

Kotetsu gave his friend a quick warning look, and Antonio just grinned and held up his hand in placation. After drifting for so long, they’d learned to communicate with just a look, and right now both of them were in agreement (though with differing tones); we’ll talk after dinner. Kaede didn’t seem to notice, and after they were done eating she allowed herself to be shooed up to her room to start her homework with a promise of ice cream once she was done.

Once she was upstairs, Kotetsu and Antonio settled on the couch with a beer each. For a few minutes there was silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts, until Antonio said,

“So you’re cheating on me now, Kotetsu?”

It was an effective ice breaker. Kotetsu sputtered and coughed up the sip of beer he’d just taken, turning to level a glare at his best friend. “ _What the hell_?!”

Antonio burst out laughing, nudging Kotetsu with his elbow. “You can’t seriously tell me that there’s another person stubborn and stupid enough to be drift compatible with you. What’s really going on?”

Kotetsu shook his head, still growling a bit and taking a generous swig from his bottle to regain his composure. “Actually, it’s true. Agnes tracked me down and asked me to try, apparently this new kid is brilliant, but hadn’t been able to find anyone else he could drift with. I tried, and…” he paused, watching the fluorescent light from the kitchen glint off the bottle in his hand, formulating his words. “There’s a connection there, of some kind. Turns out he was there, when Rock Bison fell south of Sternbild.”

Antonio whistled softly, solemn again in an instant. “Not many people in the town survived that day.”

“He managed to get out, to the woods outside, I think. I’m not sure, I only know what I saw in the drift. I don’t know if that’s what makes us compatible or what, but…”

“I wonder…” Antonio trailed off, then shrugged at Kotetsu’s questioning look. “I wonder if he’d be compatible with me, or any of Gypsy or Brawler’s pilots.”

“You’re not a pilot, you’re a liability,” Kotetsu jabbed good-naturedly at his maimed shoulder, and Antonio rolled his eyes. “…And we’ll never know, will we? Brawler’s pilots died of Kaijuu Blue ages ago, and Gypsy’s…” He stopped, and he and Antonio silently clinked their bottles together in toast. Sometimes pilots walked away from kaijuu, sometimes they didn’t.

“…You’re not seriously thinking of combat again, are you, Kotetsu? At your age?”

“Hey! I’m thirty-six, not sixty! Apparently the MK VI has the engineering of a heavenly chariot, or so I’ve been informed by the lead engineer. Weird guy. But he was quick to reassure me it’ll be _tons_ safer than the old MK I’s and it’s practically impossible for the pilot to actually die, short of being stepped on, drowned or blown up.”

“All the usual ways, then,” Antonio grunted. “The MK I’s were perfectly serviceable, for the time.”

“That’s what I said!”

“What about Kaede?”

Kotetsu stopped, shoulders slumping a little as he leaned back in the couch. “…Yeah. That’s the question, isn’t it?”

“What _about_ Kaede?”

Both men jumped, twisting around with wide eyes to stare at the girl standing in the doorway with one hand on her hip, binder of math homework cradled in her other arm. She frowned at them, brows drawn down into a sharp expression that made Kotetsu’s heart ache with how much it reminded him of Tomoe suddenly. “A-ah, Kaede-”

“What’s going on?” She walked over to plant herself firmly in front of them, just on the other side of the coffee table where neither of them could really escape without physically pushing her out of the way. “I’m thirteen, dad, not a kid. You don’t have to hide stuff from me.”

“Well….” Kotetsu scratched at his goatee, shared a helpless look with Antonio. His best friend made a desperate and clear 'don’t look at me, she’s _your_ daughter’ motion, and Kotetsu sighed again. He set his beer down and scooted over on the couch a bit, patting the space beside him. “…Kaede, come here. I need to talk to you about something.”

Kaede put her binder down and sat, and Kotetsu began to tell her about the drift.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Actual hardest part of writing T&B fanfic: Fire Emblem's pronouns.  
> That said, I'll be using 'they' for Nathan, since that's the English pronoun the creators themselves seem to consider closest. I've never written a character that uses 'they' as their primary pronoun before, so please be patient and excuse any grammatical slips that happen.

The Mk VI was beautiful.

Stepping into the huge hanger at Sternbild Base (they'd expanded since the last time he was here, a lot) Kotetsu was reminded of the feeling he'd had all those years ago seeing the first Mk I's for the first time. Tacit Ronin had been a tiny thing, meant more for rescue and retrieval than actual fighting, but Yukon Brawler had been a beast of a thing, and Rock Bison even more so. Seeing them there, looming over them, after all the months of planning and training, had been a rush.

He was getting deja vu now, walking back into that same hanger to see the three jaeger currently stationed at the base, his new Mk VI, a relatively new Mk V, and a slightly older Mk IV. The Mk IV was actually the biggest of the bunch, though not by much, the still unnamed Mk VI came close. The Mk IV was done up in vibrant red with blue and yellow detailing, and the jets attached to its forearms released fire and ice respectively, earning it its name of Fire Rose.

The Mk V, Sky Dragon, was much smaller than either of the other two; Kotetsu was vividly reminded of Tacit Ronin. But Sky Dragon was small not to squeeze in under city debris, but rather because it was the first jaeger capable of flight. Limited flight, but still _flight_ , and Agnes had given him a whole file detailing how they were going to branch jaeger manufacture off into two parts; the traditional huge heavy hitters and the smaller, faster flight-capable ones. Kotetsu hadn't had a chance to meet any of the other pilots yet, but Agnes had looked very amused at the thought, which made him worry a little.

But man, the Mk VI. Rock Bison would always be Kotetsu's heart, that was where he and Antonio had fought and bled and done _so much_ , and she'd been amazing for what she was, but Kotetsu couldn't help the little flutter in his heart when he laid eyes on his new baby. It was nearly as big as Fire Rose, but proportioned differently, the forearms and lower legs heavy and bulky compared to the relatively slender torso, all blue and white with bright green detailing.

He gave a low whistle, peripherally aware of Barnaby stepping up beside him. "You really designed her, Bunny?"

Barnaby twitched, eyes narrowing behind his glasses, and Kotetsu grinned. The first time had been an accident, still tangled up from the drift and words slurring together, his Japanese accent thicker than it usually was. But Barnaby had looked so _scandalized_ , and Kotetsu knew from the drift that he'd never really had anyone to take the piss out of him before. It was a little late to start, but Kotetsu figured he might as well. "Don't call me that. And yes, I worked with the engineers to design it. For the Mk VI, we're trying to see if we can incorporate a little more fighting finesse than just 'hit the kaijuu really hard over and over'. So to that end, I programmed the software with the skills of various martial arts, and the engineers upped the dexterity of the limbs. We'll have to train as well, but any moves we make the jaeger will be able to keep up with."

"Hm," Agnes had already given him an outline of that, but it was interesting to hear it from the source. He scratched at his goatee thoughtfully. "I already know a bit. I've done some kickboxing to keep in shape."

Barnaby nodded thoughtfully. "It's a good place to start."

Footsteps behind them, and both of them turned as Antonio walked up between them. He wasn't in full uniform (neither was Kotetsu, even though both of them still technically held rank), but he'd put on his Rock Bison pilot jacket, rich brown leather worn at the elbow and with their raging bull icon patched onto the back. Kotetsu was wearing his too, and absently he wondered if those were still a thing, if he and Barnaby would get to design a logo and slap in on the back of a badass leather jacket.

"....That's nice," Antonio said after a few minutes of contemplation. Barnaby gave him a disbelieving look, and Kotetsu laughed. "It's very shiny?" he offered with a shrug, and Kotetsu laughed harder. "What're you going to call it, Kotetsu?"

Barnaby gave him a sharp look, and even after only one drift, Kotetsu could easily read that look. It was a look that said 'don't you dare name it something stupid, I will throw you into the ocean'. It was surprisingly refreshing, Kotetsu was really starting to look forward to training and piloting with him.

"I'm not sure yet," he answered Antonio. "But I'm kinda thinking.... Wild Tiger."

~*~

Kotetsu was beginning to wonder if maybe he and Antonio were actually the abnormal ones, and it was far more likely for total opposites to be drift compatible.

Agnes in all her infinite wisdom had decided that maybe a party was the best place for Kotetsu to meet the other on-station pilots and support staff. At least she'd invited Antonio and Kaede, and Kaede was having the time of her life running around and interviewing people for her school project, or school newspaper, or something. The point was that come tomorrow she would be the most popular girl in her class for having met _real jaeger pilots_ , not just her dad and lame old uncle.

Kotetsu had barely arrived before he spotted a flash of pink and red through a cluster of uniformed techs, and his eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Nathan!" He couldn't help the honest delight in his voice, and when the other turned around and spotted him, they beamed right back.

"Well look at you, still so handsome!"

They were taller and broader than Kotetsu remembered, though their hair was still that same shockingly bright pink. They weren't exactly friends, but Nathan had been in training to be a pilot in Kotetsu and Antonio's later years, and it was always good to see someone from back then had survived. Last they'd heard, they still hadn't found a drift partner, though obviously that had changed.

Nathan slipped through the crowd to grab Kotetsu in a hug, and peripherally Kotetsu was aware of Antonio and Barnaby wandering up to them. When Nathan released him, they beamed over at Antonio and blew a kiss, making Antonio redden spectacularly. "And Antonio too! When the admiral said she had a surprise, she wasn't kidding!"

Kotetsu chuckled. "Suddenly the flamethrower on Fire Rose makes sense, I should have known."

About then, a young woman stepped up beside Nathan, giving the rest of them quizzical looks. Kotetsu was surprised to see how young she was, somewhere in her early twenties. She had a pretty face and a nice smile, her curly blond hair pinned back out of her eyes with a pair of clips shaped like blue roses. "Are you harassing people, Nat?"

"I never harass!" Nathan sniffed, though Antonio looked about to protest. "Kotetsu, Antonio, this is my co-pilot."

"I'm Karina," she offered her hand to Kotetsu, then so smoothly Kotetsu barely noticed she was doing it, she switched hands to offer her other one to Antonio so there wouldn't be an awkward moment with his empty sleeve. Antonio's expression said he noticed, but Karina just smiled at them and nodded to Barnaby, who she was already acquainted with. "I'm happy to finally meet you, Nat's talked about you a lot."

"Really?" Kotetsu blinked in surprise, and she nodded, giving them a sly smile.

"I think they've got a crush on you both, Mister Rock Bison Heroes."

Nathan turned a bit pink, and Antonio sputtered, but Kotetsu just laughed and shrugged. Karina grinned openly and continued, patting Nathan on the arm. "Poor Nat, all these cute boys flinging themselves at them just to have a taste of a jaeger pilot, but here they are pining on after older men."

"Karinaaa!" Nathan was much pinker now, and pouted at their partner as she laughed.

Kotetsu just snickered, feeling better and better about his stationing here. This was going to be _fun_. "Good to see more pairs kicking at that stupid latent sexuality theory."

Nathan rolled their eyes and nodded and Antonio snorted, but Karina gave him a quizzical look. "What theory?"

"Oh god, is it finally falling out of favor? Back when we were piloting there was a huge chunk of the world that assumed for some reason that _every_ drift bond had to be sexual. Even the siblings. And at the time about half of all pairs were siblings. It was ridiculous how many times Antonio and I had to put reporters off the subject of what we supposedly did in bed together, even after I got married and _had a kid_."

"Ew," Karina wrinkled her nose delicately. "Nat, I love you, but no."

"No offense taken, my dear. You do not have nearly the right equipment to take me on."

Karina turned a bit pink herself at the bald statement, and Kotetsu snickered again. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Barnaby had gone quiet and stiff, so he looked over at him and nudged him gently with his elbow. "Hey, you okay?"

"That's... just..." Barnaby shook his head, and Kotetsu wondered if he was imagining the faint dusting of a blush on his cheeks. "How could people believe that? _Every_ pair?"

Kotetsu tried not to be offended at the implications of that statement. "It's just a stupid theory. It never had much traction in the scientific community, it was mostly just the regular people who have no idea what a drift actually entails beyond what they see on tv. And let's face it, lots of drift partners _are_ also lovers."

Barnaby made a strangled sound, and Kotetsu decided to leave him alone, especially since he spotted Kaede incoming at high speed.

"Dad, dad, you're famous!"

Kotetsu blinked, catching her as she barreled into him. "You knew that already."

"Yeah, but not history book famous, like _real world_ famous!"

Ouch.

"I mean, you and Uncle Antonio are someone's heroes and _everything_!"

Kotetsu and Antonio exchanged surprised looks, eyebrows raised. "What?"

"Miss Kaburagi! Wait for us!"

Kotetsu looked up to see two more people weaving their way through the crowd toward them. They were both blond, but that was where the similarities ended. The man was tall, broad shouldered with a friendly smile that reminded Kotetsu somehow of a golden retriever. The girl was much shorter, whipcord thin but with a sense of strength about her, her expression more reserved and shoulder-length hair tucked neatly behind her ears. They had to be Sky Dragon's pilots, especially since they were wearing matching black leather jackets with a golden dragon spiraling up the right sleeve to rest its head over their hearts.

(Score, the jackets _were_ still a thing.)

The man twitched slightly when he got through the crowd and saw them properly, his shoulders straightening sharply and almost coming to attention. His eyes shone, and suddenly Kotetsu knew what hero worship felt like. "Captain Kaburagi! Captain Lopez! It's an honor to finally meet you! Your daughter was just telling us you've joined Mr. Brooks in piloting our Mk VI."

Barnaby coughed. "Keith, I've told you, you can just call me Barnaby."

"Ah, yeah," Kotetsu glanced sideways and was relieved to see Antonio looked just as befuddled and slightly uncomfortable as he felt. "Just 'Kotetsu' and 'Antonio' is fine, we're not really formal."

Antonio managed a chuckle and nod. "I think that's the first time I've been called by rank in a decade."

"But-" Sky Dragon's pilot looked earnestly concerned for a moment, then his face cleared into a determined expression and nodded. "Understood! I'm Captain Keith Goodman, co-pilot of Sky Dragon, and this is Captain Paolin Huang."

The still-silent girl beside him nodded to them with a slight, shy smile. "You can call me Lin if that makes it easier."

Kotetsu chuckled. "Paolin is a hell of a lot easier to pronounce than 'Kotetsu', so I think we're even."

Kaede tugged on Kotetsu's sleeve, beaming up at him. "Captain Goodman said you're the reason he became a jaeger pilot."

Keith turned a bit pink, but didn't look away or drop his eyes, reminding Kotetsu even more of an earnest puppy dog. "It's true. When I was younger, Rock Bison was an inspiration for me. When I was a child, I was very sickly."

Their disbelieving looks must have been obvious, because Paolin said, surprisingly dryly, "I know. If I didn't drift with him, I wouldn't believe it either."

Keith just looked sheepish, probably used to such skepticism. "Anyway, when I was thirteen I was in the hospital with another bout of something-or-other when Rock Bison fell. I was watching on tv."

Beside them, Barnaby tensed, but Kotetsu and Antonio just glanced at each other and then gave Keith very understanding looks. It was an odd thing, being so famous for having your ass kicked in by a kaijuu, but they'd gotten used to it, and they both understood why civilians felt so... moved by them. They weren't the first or only jaeger to fall, not by a long shot. Plenty of pilots had _died_ , even before Genghis ripped Rock Bison in two. But it resonated because it wasn't just a pair of pilot names inscribed in stone and rattled off on the morning Kaijuu Report, the jaeger lost somewhere far out to sea. Genghis had made it twenty klicks south of a major urban center, there were news cameras and civilian cell phones everywhere despite the danger. There was high definition footage that got replayed over and over, and that made it really _real_ for a lot of people for probably the first time. And they'd survived, gone on and done interviews and tv appearances. Antonio was even interviewed for a psychology journal about his decision to remove his technically healthy but non-functional arm. They were symbols, faces and names to represent all the jaeger pilots that were injured or killed in the line of duty.

"I was horrified," Keith continued. "I mean, everyone was." He paused, expression uncertain as he realized this might be a sensitive topic. But Kotetsu gave him an encouraging smile, and Antonio waved at him to continue, so he did. "But I also felt so _helpless_. I wanted to do something, _anything_ to help. To help fight the kaijuu, or support the jaeger, or just to protect civilians. But I was just a skinny kid with pneumonia, I wasn't very strong or smart, I knew there was nothing I'd ever be able to do. It was awful. But then," his eyes lit up, and Paolin gave a slight, indulgent smile and a roll of her eyes, likely remembering something specific. "I found out you survived. And even though you were both hurt so badly, you were working so hard to get better. Even if you couldn't pilot again, you wanted to do _something_ , just like me."

That was true. They'd both rehabbed in record time, and Kotetsu had even tried drifting with a few other pilots to see if he could take to a jaeger again right away, but none had been successful. He and Antonio had both taken up support positions, assisting in the control rooms for several years before retiring completely to pursue other things until now.

"So I decided if you could work that hard while in pain, so could I, and I was going to get strong enough to help." Keith grinned widely, obviously so happy to be living his dream come true. "I never expected to make full pilot, a spot in the control room would have been enough. I was a comm officer in the Air Force before I transferred over to the jaeger division."

"The pilot thing is my fault," Paolin spoke up, still smiling slightly in what Kotetsu was coming to recognize as her default amused expression. "My father is a friend of Admiral Joubert's, he got me in for pilot training when I was still really young, and I worked hard enough and was good enough that Admiral had me pegged for one of the new Mk V's, if we could find me a partner. Keith could make friends with a rock if he tried, so of course he'd started talking to me the first time he came across me in the cafeteria. I knew how much he wanted to be a pilot, so I asked the admiral if he could try."

"Drifting is very strange," Keith said with such a straight face that everyone burst out laughing, and after a moment he joined them. "What I mean is, it's not at all like I expected."

"Of course not," Antonio said, shifting his stance in a way Kotetsu had come to recognize as the substitute for crossing his arms. "It's another person merging with yourself. It's still strange when it's your best friend, and you already know so much about each other. I can't imagine trying it with a near stranger."

For some reason that made Karina laugh, and Nathan looked a bit sheepish. "Oh, our first time was a _disaster_."

Kotetsu wasn't surprised, since he'd known Nathan years ago, but Barnaby looked puzzled. "Really? But you get along so well."

Nathan and Karina both laughed and shared a look. "Sure, now," Karina said. "But four years ago I was a seventeen-year-old bitch who thought she didn't need anyone else and was determined to prove it."

"And I," Nathan chuckled, running a hand over their short pink hair. "Thought I was far too good to drift with some little girl who'd never stepped foot into a jaeger hanger before."

Karina coughed, looking both amused and embarrassed for her past actions. "When I first met them, I thought Nat was so... ridiculous they could never be a pilot."

"I _am_ so ridiculous," Nathan grinned. "And I think your exact words at the time were 'flame-broiled tranny'."

Kotetsu burst out laughing, half at Barnaby's horrified face. "Nathan, I hate to say it..."

"I know," they grinned, looking not at all offended. "Not terribly inaccurate, if inelegant."

Kaede blinked, still hanging off Kotetsu's sleeve. "Dad, what's a tranny?"

Kotetsu stopped laughing.

~*~

"So you're the other pilot for the Wild Tiger, huh?"

Kotetsu straightened up from where he was familiarizing himself with Tiger's controls and interfaces; they'd changed almost more than he'd imagined possible in the four generations between Bison and Tiger, but the basic motion controls were the same, just far more digital.

The speaker was standing in the cockpit doorway behind him, dressed in the dark blue jumpsuit of a tech. His had the addition of a silver armband with some sort of gear or star emblem. He had pale blond hair that reminded Kotetsu a little of Barnaby, pulled back under a red bandanna. He looked to be in his mid- to late-twenties, and Kotetsu wondered if _anyone_ in this base besides him was over the edge of thirty-five. When Kotetsu straightened, he stepped over and offered his hand. Kotetsu took it. "I'm Ivan, one of the head techs for the Mk VI, but you can call me Origami."

"Origami?" Kotetsu blinked. "You really don't look or sound Japanese."

"I'm not. My boss gave me the nickname because I'm small enough I can fold into places in the jaeger that no one else can reach. You've met Saito?"

Kotetsu chuckled, remembering their first meeting, delivered almost entirely in Japanese and in an excruciatingly soft whisper. Agnes and Barnaby had been so frustrated. "Yeah, he gave me a briefing on Tiger's specs."

"He's my boss. He's chief engineer, and mostly deals with the computers and control interfaces. Ben and I are the head techs for everything else. Ben oversees the armour and joints and support structures, and I mostly deal with the wiring and power sources and motors."

"The guts," Kotetsu summarized, and Ivan laughed. "Yeah, the guts."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is really going to be more like vignettes than an actual plotful fic.

**Author's Note:**

> ...There's likely to be more of this, and more characters showing up. I know where most of them are already. PR characters are extremely unlikely to show (cameos if anything, like with Gypsy in this chapter), the T &B cast are the stars.


End file.
